It feels like only a couple years ago, but it's been seven years since Thrasher'sMichael Burnett wrote an article
about Flip's Sorry premiering to a half-hearted and scant crowd of Japanese skaters in Tokyo. As we all know, that video was highly anticipated and delivered beyond all expectations (at least as far as I'm concerned), but in the article, Burnett theorized that this lack of zest for the video and a seemingly minor skate scene at the time, had more to do with the Japanese peoples' interest in fashion over skating.
From my moderate exposure to Japanese people, Japanese skate videos and their strong presence in street culture sites devoted entirely to limited edition sneakers and the most obscure color of a hoodie or sweater, I can't argue too much with that assessment. From my experience, however, it's not just fashion, it's kitsch. The Japanese people I have known latch on to pop culture.
For example, a Japanese friend of a friend saved all of his money to come to LA to see the city, so I volunteered to show him around. His dream had been fueled by various rappers, including NWA, Ice T, West Coast Connect, Snoop, Ice Cube, Tupac and The Game, among others who gave him a mythological perception of the city. He seemed to love the idea more than the experience, which explained one evening when we discovered The Roots
were going to have a concert and tried to convince him to go. Now, I'll admit that the
The wacky waxin' chain bordslider
Roots are far from a west coast rap group, but it's a better experience than asking us to buy him two forties of Old E and leave him at his hotel (where the entire staff spoke Japanese) to drink malt liquor, smoke crappy cigarettes and take pictures of himself posing in hip-hop stances and flashing simulated gang signs in his hotel room (which was what he actually did; I saw the photos later on when he was scrolling through his phone to show me other pictures).
My personal incident aside, judging from a lot of the recent Youtube clips I have seen coming out of Japan there has been a turn around in Japanese skateboarding—whether prompted by Burnett's article or not. The first one in recent memory to become a youtube hit was the wacky waxing 50-50er Gou Miyagi
. Whether it's the weird editing or the novelty of the tricks that caught skateboarding's collective conscience (I mean, that part was insane), the most enlightening part to me is that people from Japan seem to be skating quite a bit—uniquely and creatively. Out of that same Far East Skate Network
camp, I found more videos (older ones even), like this montage, A Yokohama and Yokosuka montage,
Junichi Arahata of Lesque
This Jungle Groove montage, an acoustic groove montage...I mean, there are all sorts of them that you should take a look at (just look for "FESN", "Underground Brodcasting", or "Far East Skate Network"). A very recent one that popped up was a guy named Itoshin's part
in the Japanese company Lesque's
video Endless Questions. His song makes me think of Daewon's part in the Almost video
, but he skates more like Olly Todd. It's a pretty rad part and you can tell they have been finding more and more spots. Check out the other Lesque riders off that link.
Maybe it's a sign of these digital times that we can see this stuff or a lessening of the fixation on consumer pop culture, but, either way, the Japanese scene is shredding now and making it known the best that they can. It's rad to see.—Josh Brooks
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